Hellooooo! (Echoes)…We’re up here on the summit of the week, having finally finished what feels like a long, hard climb….it’s Friday, December 14, 2018. Portland’s weather turns rainy and windy, with highs of 50. Sunrise 7:43 AM, sunset 4:27 PM. We’re one week away from the winter solstice.
I’m really looking forward to this morning on the radio, because it’s our annual K103 Christmas Show! Live performance radio in a great big studio with a piano and everything, the way my Daddy used to do it. Tune in for high school choirs, local musicians of national acclaim, an all-star bell choir, and a visit from a St. Nick who’s so real that he has a website. And if you’re near a TV, Fox 12 is doing cutins every half hour!
OK, let’s give this news thing a whirl! As always, I appreciate (and clearly need) the editing help.
The FBI is working to identify the source of the bomb threats that have turned up in email inboxes of schools, government offices, and businesses in Oregon, Washington, and all over the country, demanding $20,000 Bitcoin payments or else. They’re calling it a hoax and a scam, but still, it’s very concerning.
The Portland Water Bureau reports that somebody stole an entire Benson Bubbler from SE 65th and Foster. They’re kinda cute about it…putting the announcement in the form of a missing person bulletin…Born in the 1940s…height about 3 feet tall…weight 50-60 pounds…. they make it sound like somebody swiped a garden gnome…
Neighbors in the Bethany area of Washington County are fighting back against whoever punctured an 8-foot inflatable black Santa Claus put up by an African-American couple. Their neighbors are now also getting black Santas…and making sure that security cameras are trained on them.
It’s not the billion dollar investment they’re making in Austin, but Apple announced yesterday that it’s expanding its Portland area operations–which many people didn’t know existed. The company itself won’t say how many employees it has in Portland, but The Oregonian/OregonLive says it reported last spring that “Apple has a new hardware lab and has been poaching engineers from Intel.” The new announcement may egg them on. (By the way, analysts say tech companies like Apple and Amazon are expanding eastward, beyond their West Coast roots, in part because of the high cost of housing here. Money goes a lot farther in Austin).
Intel says it wasn’t a hazmat spill that sickened dozens of people at a Hillsboro facility last month–it was a really nasty cold.
The soccer fields at Delta Park have big signs that say No Animals. Those same soccer fields are absolutely thick with Canada Geese.
Headline in PDX Monthly: The Hottest Gift This Holiday Season Is a Robert Mueller Devotional Candle.
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The Washington Post reports that a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl died of dehydration and shock a day after she was taken into Border Patrol custody for crossing into the US illegally with her father and a large group of migrants along the border in New Mexico. She’d had no food or water for days, and a statement from the Border Patrol says “agents took every possible step to save the child’s life under the most trying of circumstances. As fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, we empathize with the loss of any child.”
Cybill Shepherd is saying CBS suddenly turned sour on her hit show “Cybill” in the mid-1990s—right after she spurned the advances of CEO Les Moonves. She says her show would have run for another 5 years. Moonves resigned in September after multiple reports of nonconsensual relationships with women.
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Tomorrow, KGW turns 62. Why does that feel so…right?
Rain Man opened in theaters 30 years ago this weekend. When’s the last time you saw that? I’ll see if I can find something to put in the Coffee Cup links.
This is the weekend of “NW Natural Holidays with the Trail Band,” the annual concert series at the Aladdin Theater, benefiting Friends of the Children, and led, as always, by the gifted musical couple of Marv and Rindy Ross–a shimmering light of love and talent that’s illuminated the music world in Portland and far beyond for decades.
And! Dweezil Zappa is at the Roseland Theater tomorrow.
Newly named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Janet Jackson, Stevie Nicks, Def Leppard. Radiohead, the Cure, Roxy Music and the Zombies. Nominees not making the cut: John Prine, Todd Rundgren, Devo.
The Blazers host the Toronto Raptors tonight. Whip them! Whip them good!
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Let’s wrap the week with a special lineup of positive, or at least intriguing, stories. Click on the Coffee Cup, at the top of the Comments section, for links to the items.
–“How a veteran given four months to live restored a polluted Seattle creek — and lived another 27 years”.
–“Gary Sinise Flies Gold Star Children to the Happiest Place on Earth — People Are Overwhelmingly Appreciative”
–“Letter to Santa found after 120 years”
–“Paul Allen is gone, but his good works continue: $125 million gift launches institute to probe immune system”
–“The Raunchy, Comical, Political Snowman Invasion of 1511: How a frozen festival helped Brussels survive the ‘Winter of Death.'” This is a longish piece for your weekend reading.
–“For today’s 30th anniversary of Rain Man…check out a scene!”
–“Last reminder: you can still enroll in an Affordable Care Act plan for 2019, but Saturday is the deadline.”
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So if I don’t get to see you this morning at our K103 Christmas Show, you can hear it live on 103.3 FM in the anywhere within, what, 75 miles or so of Portland, or on the iHeart Radio app, just about everywhere else!
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